The story of Indian spices is more than 5000 years old. Centuries before Greece and Rome had been discovered the sailing ship was carrying natural organic products like perfumes spices, textiles to Arabia & Egypt instead of weapons.

The Greek merchants who visited South Indian spices market before Christian Era especially Romans, spent most of their life in South India for shipping the spices.

There was an era when the rich people exchanged their gold with black pepper and cinnamon. All historical voyages which took place in India aimed for shipping of spices from South India to Europe, Arabia or African countries.

Vasco Da Gama was searching for a new route to the spice land and landed at Kerala Coast at AD 1492. He travelled almost 24000 miles for his journey to India and back to Lisbon. Captain Gama’s successful trip intensified international power struggle for control over the spice trade. For three centuries, the nations of western Europe, France, Portugal, Spain, Britain, and Holland fought various sea battles to capture the spice producing colonies.

Can you imagine, one sack of pepper was equivalent to a man’s life, a pound of ginger was equivalent to a sheep and one-pound mace was equivalent to three sheep.

Kerala, God’s own country occupies the monopoly of certain spices especially on Cardamom trade till colonial era and now Kerala spices play a major role in global trade.